Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION
Of the opportunistic infections which flourish around the HIV is the series of vulgar entertainments which regularly appear in its name. Sarafina 2 was the first of these unpleasant tumours and has been followed by many florid metastases, like the R5-million extravaganza mounted at the opening of the Aids Conference in Durban earlier this year.
The latest neoplasia was the glistening eruption of populist bilge which formed the three-hour World Aids Day special, broadcast by the SABC last Friday. There can be few better examples of how not to go about dealing with a full-blown national death plague. Unless it is to be believed that a fast-moving set of cheap laser effects, sales-seminar incentive clichs and encouragement therapy lectures will ring true among those most at risk. Mike Lipkin-type corporate motivational jargon might go down well with the tyre marketing team, but it can hardly be adjudged the best way of persuading some randy lad living in a rural shacklands to wear a french letter.
The above was another product of the LoveLife organisation whose core mission statement appears to be: Aids is a very beeeeeg problem so let’s throw some grotesque schlock at it. Nkosazana must be hosing herself.
I can’t turn my back for five minutes but they all lapse into their wanton ways. Talk about a crude awakening. On my return from my overseas sojourn, the very first time I nervously switched on my telly I was greeted by an SABC news reporter in resonant incoherence: “Normally quiet these streets is where the demonstrations takes place.”
Then back at the studio where Vuyo Mbuli was interviewing the head of the MTN cellphone goldmine, Jacques Sellschop, given a good 10 minutes in which to rebut some uncomfortable Mail & Guardian accusations about MTN having callously ripped off its customers with faulty phones and dodgy VAT charges. As Vuyo discharged some of his famous powderpuff questions I knew I was back home. And listening to Jacques the Whipper sounding off about the consummate safety of cellphone radiation was just like listening to those statements about the utterly benign effects of cigarette smoking which used to ema-nate from the British American Tobacco Company.
I had to wonder why an e.tv but no SABC news cameraman was on board the recent SA Navy’s rescue mission to Gough Island. A phone-call to the officer responsible for media communications reveals that, in fact, the SABC’s Cape Town news department were offered a berth on the Protea but turned it down saying that their staff and equipment were deployed in coverage of the municipal elections and all that implies. E.tv, on the other hand, fair leapt at the offer and with help of the SAAF’s 22 Helicopter Squadron had their man, Gerhardt van Niekerk, on the ship within three hours. Later e.tv were to interview Van Niekerk and show his footage of the rescue. One would have thought that the principal public broadcaster, forever anxious to exhibit the vigilance and readiness of the South African military, would also have grabbed the chance.
Not surprising, really. Especially when it comes to Cape Town news coverage, e.tv’s small band are regularly far ahead of the SABC. A case in point would be the SABC’s pathetic coverage of the devastating Cape peninsula fires early this year, made more pathetic by comparison with e.tv’s efforts.
Another instance was in the recent “reopening” of Cape Town’s District Six. The organisation responsible for the event’s publi-city headed by former Cape Times editor Ryland Fisher admits that the television coverage was offered only to e.tv. The reason? “Because the SABC is these days so difficult to work with.” When the SABC Cape Town news department finally tumbled to the fact that his nibs, Thabo, would be attending the District Six do, they relapsed into panic mode and hastily had to find an outside broadcast unit in time.
And while on the subject of SABC television news one also has to wonder why the corporation totally ignored last week’s milepost Constitutional Court judgement, where Allan Boesak lost his appeal to have his jail sentence overturned. Had the verdict gone Boesak’s way you may be sure the SABC would have put it top of the bill. It seems Thabs, Majunka, Nelson et al must never be seen to have been wrong.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear: our hopes about Barney Mthombothi are already awash with swampfoot disease.